


Speed

by catwalkninja



Series: this is not a 90's action movie [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arthur is a lawyer, Domestic Fluff, Eames is a cop, Established Relationship, High-Speed Chases, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Uses of Strong Language, One Shot, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalkninja/pseuds/catwalkninja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?” Eames isn’t a hero, except when he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speed

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a Speed AU but not really??? All you really need to know about the film is in the summary... also, this is my first attempt in the Inception fandom, and my first posted work on AO3! Huzzah!

“Mr. Eames,” Cobb’s voice blooms to life in his earpiece.

“A little busy right now, sir,” Eames grinds out with heat. And he doesn’t mean to be rude, but heck, it’s been a long day.

“It’s all set,” Cobb confirms, thankfully ignoring his subordinate’s tone. “First checkpoint in two and then you’ve got exactly thirty seconds to get free. Got that?”

“Yep,” Eames rumbles, the facts already ingrained in his brain as though they’d been beaten there. Which, in a way, they had. Because who knew that a disgruntled city worker would be so big, so proficient in bomb making, and so unwilling to cooperate. Eames was still having trouble moving his left shoulder and the skin across his jaw was beginning to tighten noticeably. Maybe that’s what he gets for assuming, he grimaces, stretching his jaw and hearing a click. At least he can’t taste the metal in his blood anymore.

Eames yanks hard on the steering wheel of the bus with a precision and strength he’d only mastered in the last hour and it slowly responds; the amount of hydraulic fluid the bus had lost- not to mention oil, coolant, brake fluid, and just about everything else- Eames was frankly surprised it was still moving. Sheer force of will he hoped, and no small amount of divine intervention.

“Did Yusuf run the numbers?” He grunts, sweat dotting his brow.

Cobb coughs an embarrassed sort of sound into the phone.

“Well?” Eames presses, trying not to let panic fill his chest. This wasn’t going to be good.

“Forty-six percent.”

Eames could laugh. Except that he couldn’t.

“Forty-six?!” He barks. “Yusy’s feeling generous today, huh? What, is there a bet on?”

There is metal to his tone. But that’s only because there is metal around him, approximately 18 tons of it, speeding at fifty-plus miles per hour toward a protective bunker set up at the end of the deserted stretch of highway. When the bus hit that barrier, the metal would be in pieces and flames and Eames was being told he had a _forty-six percent_ chance of survival. Pardon him for sounding a bit annoyed.

Yusuf’s voice fills the comm.

“I double checked the math, Eames,” Yusuf begins, in that passive aggressive scientific tone that says the speaker really wishes someone would appreciate the complexity of his position i.e. the great burden of inflated intelligence. At least he has the good sense to sound apologetic, because even Yusuf knows he’s given Eames horrible odds—or maybe he’s hedging his bets, because even if Eames has a fifty-four percent chance of being reduced to charred human-burger chunks in less than three minutes that doesn’t mean Yusuf isn’t still appropriately frightened of the man. So he continues babbling, anxiously, about complicated equations: speed, velocity, the blast radius of the bomb strapped under the bus Eames is currently driving… Eames tunes him out. Two minutes, Cobb had said. Two minutes, and he’s not going to spend it listening to Yusuf prattle. Eames clenches his eyes shut and opens them again.

“Yusuf,” he growls, almost clawing into the speaker button around his throat. “Do shut up. And put Cobb on.”

Yusuf shuts up. Cobb’s voice reenters Eames’ ear piece.

“Hit that mark, Mr. Eames,” he pauses. “Don’t get dead.” Cobb voice is absolutely firm, painfully so, but beneath is a familiarity built upon ten years of service -close quarters and closer calls- and a palpable fondness.

“Yes, sir,” Eames thinks his voice sounds hollowed-out, empty. “I got to make a call.”

The earpiece goes blessedly quiet. Eames twists his forearm around the steering wheel, clinging to it idiotically by the bend of his elbow. His foot remains pressed into the accelerator firmly; he’d long since lost most of the feeling in his ankle. The bus groans a little beneath him, laboring along the straightaway, struggling to keep speed. Eames digs in his pocket with his free hand, glancing between the road (which had been cleared long ago), the speedometer, and his watch. Quarter after three. Eames swears.

A minute to make a call. Never before has Eames felt so trapped by numbers, by precious time.

Eames jams the speed dial, the touch screen lagging a little with age before finally connecting the call. It rings once before the voice of his beloved hisses into the other end:

“What the actual _fuck_ , Eames?”

 _Arthur._ Eames smiles, a warmth filling his veins that has nothing to do with the heat of the vehicle or the stress of the moment.

“I know, darling, listen—“

But Arthur isn’t listening. He’s still talking. Seething in fact, and Eames can practically feel the flame of his ire burning through phone as it pressed against Eames’ cheek.

“Twice, Eames. Twice! That’s how many times I have rescheduled. And each time, _each damn time_ , you haven’t showed. Do you understand, _do you understand_ , Eames? These are the premiere interior decorators in the state! Their time, like their quality of work I remind you, is _not_ cheap. And you didn’t show, again! They looked at me with this— they won’t come back! Not now. Not after this stunt _and_ the one before! But you know what, to hell with them. Because, really, I don’t care. I don’t want to see that asshole again. Or hear that voice. ‘ _Maybe he was detained, Mr. Callahan.’_ Smug bastard!”

Arthur has veered off course. Eames can practically feel the razor-edge of his frustration through the phone, annoyance compounding, little rabbit trails of anger. _That’s my Arthur_ , he thinks with delight.

“But you know what, to hell with you too, Eames,” Arthur bites and with force, his voice pure and clear as if suddenly remembering his furious point. “Because I don’t think I ask for much. I just want to redecorate and I ask, _all I ask_ is that you do this with me. I mean, isn’t that the point?!” He sounds weary through the small phone speaker then, and disappointed. It just about breaks Eames.

“It was your lunch hour, Eames,” Arthur continues, oblivious, rounding out the last vestiges of his stored breath which, it seems, will last forever, like he’s been waiting, saving it up. “And you promised, you _promised_ me. I have been calling-- And it wasn’t even a full hour. It was forty five minutes. Forty five minutes, Eames!” Arthur spews everything at him, like an exploding volcano, in one even, bracing breath.

Bombers have no concept of lunch breaks. But of course, Eames can't really tell Arthur that. At least, not at the moment. So Eames takes it all, not saying a word, waiting for the break in the onslaught-- and despite the venom, Eames is grinning when Arthur is finally _finally_ forced to inhale.

Damn. He loves that man.

“You haven’t been watching the news, then, love,” Eames slips quickly into the sharp silence. He can see the barrier now in the hazy distance, rushing toward him, impact looming. Somehow it feels ironic.

There is a pause. A deep, immaculate-suit-shaped pause; a five-foot-nine-inches of quivering _areyoufuckingkiddingme_ pause.

“What?” Arthur shouts into the phone, the air no more filling his lungs before it is huffed out again. “Why the hell would I be watching the news? Have you even hear a word I’ve said?!”

Ten seconds to the first checkpoint.

“Yes,” Eames weighs out, his voice slotting into the stillness of this moment. “And Arthur. I love you.”

That was it. His last words maybe. Cheesy definitely, but there were worse last words he was sure.

On cue, the back tires blow. Eames drops the phone and begins counting. _Thirty, twenty-nine…_

He slams his right hand onto the steering wheel, the massive vehicle jerking him almost out of his seat. He holds on with as much strength as he can muster, countering the pull of the bus which is skidding against the loss of control. He imagines he can hear Arthur shouting profanities from that sweet scowling mouth into the abandoned phone but he can’t hear anything over the deafening pop of the tires, and the howling of metal rims and shards of rubber against the tar. The bus careens forward, despite the pull of the back, a dead weight, propelled as expected by force, velocity, something— _damn Yusuf_.

Twelve seconds.

Twelve seconds before the twenty-thousand pound bus hits the barrier and goes up in so much smoke and explosives. Metal, fuel—and flesh, if Eames can’t get away.

Nine seconds now.

Eames forsakes the driver’s seat and hauls himself down the length of the bus, running toward the gaping hole at the back, blown open when they’d evacuated the passengers some many miles back. Behind the bus trails police vehicles, a whole legion it seems, keeping an appropriate distance beyond the purported blast radius.

_Forty-six percent._

Eames runs and thinks about Arthur, of course. Angry Arthur. Arthur, the love of his stupid and often chaotic life. Arthur, with his ramrod spine and kisses that taste like a carefully planned spreadsheet. Arthur, who could be surprisingly endearing, even when sitting in a living room that, at this point, would probably never be professionally redone, fuming, and oblivious as a rock.

Forty-six percent.

Eames grins, a hard determined line. As odds go, he supposes he’d had worse.

Eames jumps.

_Three…_

_Two…_

_One…_

//

 

There are movies where the hero doesn’t make it back. And ok, Eames is using that term loosely because all he did was drive a bus. But it’s still important, somehow. Because there’s these heroes who stupidly promise a date or a dance or to help redecorate the living room. And then some asshole comes along and turns a plane into a missile or unleashes an army from outer space or straps a bomb to a city bus and suddenly everyone is noble and self-sacrificing and last minute phone calls—and Eames does realize that most of these are Marvel movie references. Eames isn’t a hero, so he’s definitely not a “super” either. But the point is that he’s not going to end up like those jerks either. Frozen in ice or human-burger chunks all over the highway, it’s all the same really. No sir. He’s going make it back for the dance, or in this case, back to Arthur and his blueprints.

To hell with dying gloriously. Eames is going live.

 

//

 

Cobb drops him off after he’s been given the go-ahead from the doctors. Nothing is broken, but Eames feels a lot less like a human as he hobbles from car to door and more like a human-shaped bruise. Things hadn’t turned purple yet, but he was fairly certain the morning would provide a panorama of color across the canvas of his pained skin. Pained it was, scuffed and gouged too. There were places where there seemed to be no skin at all. There was no shortage of variation to his battle wounds, many of which had been safely bandaged. He hopes still that their presence will bring out a maternal streak in Arthur.

It’s a long shot, Eames knows.

Because Arthur hadn’t come to the hospital. Eames wasn’t so much hurt by that as he was, well, _actually_ hurt… but it stung a little regardless.

The department had called Arthur of course, on Eames’ behalf, seeing as his phone was now part of a crime scene, lost somewhere in the mangled burning hull or scattered to the wind with the rest. Mal assured him if they found it, they’d let him know; Cobb said the department would fit the bill for a new one.

Eames didn’t know what had been said, but he knew Arthur knew something—maybe the whole story, maybe just that Eames was alive… The only thing he was sure of was that the call had been answered. The officer had that _look_ and Eames knew that look to his bones.

It was dark when Cobb finally pulled up outside Eames and Arthur's home. The lights are on over the door, which was a good sign. Cobb gives him a companionable smile, offering to walk him to the door. Eames declines.

Because Eames has no real trouble until the door where he realizes it’s bloody difficult to hold keys in fingers that had been scraped to pieces along rough blacktop, ripped ragged and covered in salve. He drops them and bends to pick them up, feeling a long hot streak pulse deep in his side. Eames straightens like a snapped string, quick and with a hum of pain. Rather pathetically he braces himself against the door and nudges the doorbell with his hip.

The door opens and Arthur stands before him, looking not the least bit disheveled, damn him. He is still in the suit he’d left in that morning, before the whole day had gone to shit— not because of the bomb threat or the harrowing chase to the bus or even the part where Eames had leapt from one speeding vehicle to another speeding vehicle that had a bomb and seven terrified passengers aboard. The real shit had been missing their second appointment with the state’s most talented and over-priced interior decorators, of course.

Arthur appraises him and Eames feels suddenly too whole. Not nearly enough bandages, he thinks, trying to remember the exact count, should he have to argue a little. It’s suddenly terribly important that Eames _looks_ like he has recently flung himself to the tar and stopped rolling in just enough time to feel the heat of the explosion singe the hair from the back of his neck. Just because he knows it happened and damn, does he feel it all over, doesn’t mean much if he doesn’t look like it happened. So Eames tries to look as pitiful as possible—which is really no stretch: he is pitiful. He is also contrite. He’s a little drugged and pathetically man-shaped and absolutely ready to grovel.

Arthur, who keeps him on the step while he gives him a brutal inspection, finally raises a brow.

“Did they get him?” As first words go, it’s not what Eames was expecting.

Eames swallows, hard, and nods. “Yes,” he replies, his throat feeling a bit like hot asphalt.

Arthur mouth twitches, holding steady a severe-looking line. But only barely. “Good,” he says, his voice purposely flat. “Saves me from ripping his spine out with my bare hands.”

Eames grins, anxiety breaking like a fever.

“Darling!” He exclaims, hoarsely. “You do care!”

Arthur scowls, over-doing the action to hold down the mutinous corners of his mouth. “Of course I care, Eames! I am not heartless!” His scowl loses it bearing somewhere along his declaration and dimples unfurl in his cheeks. “I couldn’t survive if you were blown up. Who would pay your half of the bills?”

Eames chuckles gently, his ribs feeling something like ramen noodles. “Practical as always, pet. Must be why I love you so much.”

Arthur is suddenly serious. He’s let Eames in, and they are standing in the entry, Arthur’s face away as he shuts the door, his hand lingering on the knob. The line of his shoulders is taut.

“About that,” he says, flipping the lock and turning back, his eyes meeting Eames’ with a hard, unyielding fire. “Don’t you ever pull that “last words and out in a blaze of glory” shit again, Eames, or I swear I will hunt you down in whatever circle of Hell they put you in and make you pay in ways you can’t even imagine.”

For the second time in only a handful of minutes, Eames does not doubt Arthur. Not for one second.

Eames steps into Arthur’s space, crowding him back against the door. Every part of him aches, but he wants to be near Arthur, _has_ to be near him.

“I am sorry,” he says softly, bringing up the mess of his right hand to affix a dislodged strand of dark hair back into place. The pomade lingers on his fingers in a way Eames will never admit he adores. “I am sorry about missing the appointment. Twice.”

Arthur huffs, all the fight gone out like a snuffed candle. He slumps against the door, spine loose and looks up at Eames through dark lashes. In that moment, Eames can see inside him, the way his tailored suit is only holding him together at the edges, while inside he is scattered across the living room floor: a flung tie and a perfectly pressed shirt torn in two, profanities and tears and affirmations upon aching affirmations clinging to the spread-out pieces of his chest, stretched to the limit between bone and muscle and all the squishy important stuff in between, shimmering like spider webs.

“Eames…” he begins and fails, his voice struggling past a thickness in his throat.

“Eames,” he starts again, but Eames silences him. His lips sweep the words right off Arthur’s lips, covering them again and again until there is nothing left to say because Eames has kissed it all up.

“Don’t,” he says when he’s done kissing Arthur. Done for now, that is. He presses his forehead to Arthur’s, gently, because everything still hurts. But it’s a good kind of hurt and he can take it.

They stand like that for a while in the entry, shadowed out and leaned against each other. And Eames isn’t crying. There’s grit and ash in his eyes, obviously, so there would be liquid pushing it out through his closed eyelids. Because that’s what the human body does. And Arthur doesn’t mention it when he takes Eames’ hand –the slightly less-bandaged one- and leads him up the stairs where he says he’s going to draw Eames a bath because he smells like gasoline and sweat.

Arthur might have grit in his eyes too. But Eames doesn’t mention it either.

After the bath (which is not so much a bath and more a hard scrub with a wet cloth over the small acres of unblemished skin), Eames is given clean clothes that never felt so soft. He’s fed a dinner of soft warm foods that fill his belly and then affectionately tucked into bed, where the pain meds start to kick in with force. Arthur snugs the comforter up around Eames’ shoulders gently and fixes him with a look of utter fondness.

“You’re a hero, Mr. Eames,” he says in a voice that is somehow both disapproving and wildly pleased. It’s so very Arthur. “They say so on three different channels.”

“Well,” slurs Eames, a sleepiness creeping into the lines of his speech, wobbling it like a high-speed bomb-bus barreling down a highway with its back tires blown out. “That’s important I guess: be a hero.” His eyes are shutting because he cannot keep them open, not even to watch Arthur lean in and press perfect lips on his battered brow.

What a Florence Nightingale, Eames thinks proudly, sleepily. And he’s sure to drift into dreams where Arthur is wearing a bonnet and attending bravely to wounded soldiers. Maybe, in his dreams, maybe Eames will be one of them.

“And don’t die,” Arthur adds softly.

Eames hums contentedly. “Or like Cap On… America… with ice,” he mumbles, now quite incoherent and already asleep.

Arthur smiles, his lips lingering over the kiss he’s planted on Eames’ brow between scrapes and bruises.

 

//

 

Sometime in the night, Eames is lost among the aisles at the home improvement store, lined with miles of paint swatches, and Nightingale Arthur is frowning at him, paintbrush in hand. The dream changes of course and sometime later, Eames and dream Arthur share a dance on a mortar-pocked battle ground while far in the distance an alien army descends, unheeded.

 

:: Epilogue ::

 

In the end, they tear out two walls and put an addition off the kitchen that’s lined with huge, bright windows. They carve out a whole new living room, and repaint the bathroom themselves. They choose blue, together, mostly because it’s the one color that doesn’t remind Eames of a giant bus-shaped fireball.

The hero things ends up working in their favor when Arthur secures a third appointment and Smug Bastard returns to fling himself around their home with gusto, fluttering about like some irritating  _fluttering_ thing, detailing grand idea after grand idea—all of which Eames wastes no time in harshly vetoing. It’s obvious the fellow is over the moon about Eames and each consecutive snub chips away at him deeply. Eames only feels a little sorry when the _premiere interior decorator in the state_ exits the front door in tears. But Arthur is beaming at him and it’s somehow worth it.

The footage from the day seems like it will just never die, replaying on every news station at least ten times an hour. Eames has become something of a celebrity and while he’s declined all interviews, the seven passengers he helped save seem to have no end of praise, and no shortage of news stations on which to sing them. It’s a little overwhelming, although Eames is quite fond of a compilation video he found on You Tube that sets up the material like some disaster action movie trailer, complete with nineties voice-over and cheesy taglines.

“It does sound a bit like the plot to an action movie,” Arthur offers a week later. They’re curled up on the bed because the living room is a disaster of sheetrock dust, power tools, and plastic sheeting. Arthur is positioned against Eames, wound between the worst of his healing injuries. He looks pensive as he reaches across for another handful of microwave popcorn.

“I mean, really,” he gives Eames an elaborate stare, raising a brow and licking synthetic butter and salt off his fingers. “A bomb rigged to blow up a bus if the speed drops below 50 miles per hour?” Arthur laughs. “It's a bit over-the-top, don’t you think?”

 

 

 

 


End file.
